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Today, we celebrate veterans. Let’s take a moment to thank all the members of the US Military who have served or are still serving our country. Their service is a true sacrifice and is appreciated to keep our country free and amazing!

One of my favorite moments at an SF con was when someone asked Lois McMaster Bujold about some conspiracy theory or other, and she said something like, “The longer I live the more I realize that no grand conspiracy could ever work, because people just aren’t that competent. There are no grown-ups, we’re all faking it, and no one is in charge.”

I tend to agree about the conspiracy part—how many people do you know who really keep secrets? Yeah, a few, maybe…but what percentage?

However, I’m not so sure about the “there are no grown-ups” part. Mind you, when young adults “come of age” they haven’t actually grown up—they just move to a station in life where they’ve got more freedom to make their own mistakes. And that’s as it should be.

But for myself, I find there is an age when you’ve gained enough experience that you start feeling genuinely grown-up. A bit less like you’re faking it all the time. Or more accurately, even though life still throws you plot twists, you’ve learned enough about how the world and people work that you’re at least a bit better at coping with them. I’ve named this phenomena “Crone Power,” because it was around my late forties or early fifties when I finally started to feel like I was beginning to get things figured out. People who don’t understand the symbolism of the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone don’t get this name…but since the biggest part of Crone Power comes from knowledge, I have no real problem with that. By the time they get to be Crones, maybe they’ll have figured it out. And it’s a very real power. Your body pretty much sucks (menopause, arrrgh!) but your greater experience actually begins to compensate—and this is something nobody ever told me would happen, and I didn’t expect it.

So anyway, I think there is a time in life when we finally come of age…it’s just a lot later than people usually assume.

Hilari Bell is the author of many coming of age novels, and they’re all about teens and new adults—is she a hypocrite, or what?

I’ve been busy enough lately that I find myself wasting more time and energy than I should in stewing about all the things I’m not getting done. Yes, I know that’s completely unproductive, but I do it anyway.

But yesterday I remembered a technique my brother taught me—it’s actually no more productive than stewing, but at least you end up feeling better.

You start your day with a list of things you want to accomplish. And yes, even if it’s something you’ll probably do anyway, it still counts. The things on your list can be daily habits you want to maintain, like exercise, or eating right, or even taking some time to read for pleasure. They can be household chores, like getting the fridge cleaned out or fixing that broken latch. They can certainly be work or work related tasks, like revising chapter 14 or writing your Scene13 blog. (Slam! I’ll explain that in a minute.) It can be anything at all that you want to get done, today.

Then, as the day goes on, you reward yourself with Slam points for everything on the list that you do. If you get one thing done, then your score for the day is a Slam. And let’s face it, there are some days when a Slam is a pretty good score. It may be kind of par for the course…but hey, you got par. You got something done…so, Slam! If you get two things done, you’ve got a Grand Slam day. If you get three things crossed off your list, you’ve got a Super Slam! Four gets you a SuperDuper Slam. I’m not sure my brother had a category for five things accomplished…but if you’ve crossed five things off your list in one day, you’re probably feeling so good about yourself that you don’t need this system.

The Slam System is completely customizable—you can make your tasks as hard or as easy as you like, and include whatever you like. I choose not to put walking my dog on the list, even though it’s exercise, because that’s pretty much automatic—but doing this blog absolutely counts! However, I have to schedule it before I can count it as a point. You could even elaborate on the system, so you get some other reward for your points at the end of the day. But for me, just being able to say “I got a Super Slam today!” is enough. And how much healthier is it, to end the day celebrating how much you’ve accomplished, instead fretting over how much you didn’t do? So I’m going to spellcheck this and schedule it, and…Slam!

Hilari Bell writes SF and fantasy for kids and teens—and if she can get Scholar’s Plot (book 5 in the Knight & Rogue, series) out in November like she plans, it will be a Supercalifragalistic Slam.

This month our topic was, well, there was no topic. It’s a “freebie” month. Scene13ers get to blog about anythingthey want. Well, normally I don’t like freebies. I freeze. I over-think until I can’t think. I stress myself out to the point that my stress is stressed. But this month something really great happened and I want to share.

Last month I shared that I signed a contract to publish my first young adult contemporary romance, “Unspeakable.” Now I have a novella, “Finding Willow,” releasing, too. But as great as that is, it’s not what I want to write about.

When I wrote my debut novel, “PODs,” I knew nothing about the writing community. I didn’t use critique partners or Betas—I didn’t know what a Beta was! I had no idea there were bloggers that lived to review books, nor did I know how many there were.

But writing “Unspeakable” I had a group of ladies who read my work and told me honestly what worked, what they liked, and what they loved. Man, that was a great feeling to hear them gush over my book! Then came the second half of their email… “And this is what sucks…” Well, that let the air out of my balloon.

Second Cover Reveal!

So I read their critiques, did some rewriting and had some Beta readers take a look, mainly girls the age the book would be marketed toward, and of course my group of critique partners.

Their suggestions made a huge difference. “Unspeakable” went from a good book, to a great (IMHO) book. And I realize now how essential, how priceless my CPs and Betas are in my writing career.

But there’s one other group of people other than the bloggers who are golden to authors, CPs and Betas who are priceless, and that group is other authors.

I had two cover reveals in a week. I found out about both the day before. Whoa. So I started emailing anyone I could think of that might help. And the response was Amazing. Many of you already know this because you blog here, and you stepped-up and helped. I want to tell you, you are AWESOME.

The authors that dropped everything to set-up a post at the very last minute—twice—just rocked. The way they came together to help really showed me how tight the bond is between authors. Well, how it should be, anyway.

I love helping other authors. I keep a blog for that reason, and only that reason. But to have it turned around and the help focused on me was a very prodigious experience. And for those of you who helped, thank you. You made my cover reveals awesome.

How about you? Have you ever had a time when you needed help and authors or bloggers jumped in?

Coming October 2014…Seasons’ Beginnings, Book One of the fantasy Season Avatars series.

Kron Evenhanded is an artificer, able to enchant any man-made object, but he finds people more difficult to work with. When he visits the city of Vistichia, he encounters Sal-thaath, an extremely magical but dangerous child created by Salth, another magician Kron knew at the Magic Institute. Kron attempts to civilize Sal-thaath, but when his efforts lead to tragedy, Kron is forced to ally himself with a quartet of new deities and their human Avatars. Together they must defend Vistichia as Salth attempts to drain its life and magic. But Salth has Ascended halfway to godhood over Time. Will Kron’s artifacts be enough to protect the Avatars, especially the woman he loves, or will Time separate them?

I’ve been really busy lately preparing for two upcoming releases under my pen name Ashelyn Drake. Both blog tour are running at the same time. Why? Well, the books release the same day. That’s right. I have two titles releasing on September 9th. Here they are:

Sophomore year in high school comes with its own set of problems. You’re no longer a freshmen, but you’re still two years away from ruling the school. So, you sit and languish in a kind of purgatory until junior year, when things start to get interesting.

That is, unless during your sophomore year, you find your boyfriend making out with another girl in front of your locker. Then, interesting takes on a whole new meaning, and that’s what happened to seventeen-year-old Meg Flannigan. It’s no wonder her self-esteem suffered a major hit.

Now a senior, Meg catches the eye of not one, but two guys at school (I know, right?). They happen to both be gorgeous, and each vies for her attention in the most flattering of ways. Sounds good, right? Not if one of the guys is her boyfriend, and the other one wants to be.

Meg doesn’t want to lose Ash. They’ve been together for almost five months, and she’s falling in love with him. But Noah. Ah, Noah. He’s the irresistible guy Meg has been crushing on for two years, and she isn’t ready to send him away either. But stringing both along could have disastrous results, leaving Meg in the cold once again.

One thing’s certain. Meg needs to decide between Ash and Noah soon, or she’ll lose her perfect match forever.

Sixteen-year-old Cara Tillman’s life is a perfectly normal one until Logan Schmidt moves to Ashlan Falls. Cara is inexplicably drawn to him, but she’s not exactly complaining. Logan’s like no boy she’s ever met, and he brings out a side of Cara that she isn’t used to. As the two get closer, everything is nearly perfect, and Cara looks forward to the future.

But Cara isn’t a normal girl. She’s a member of a small group of people descended from the mythical phoenix bird, and her time is running out. Rebirth is nearing, which means she’ll forget her life up to this point—she’ll forget Logan and everything they mean to one another.. But that may be the least of Cara’s problems.

A phoenix hunter is on the loose, and he’s determined to put an end to the lives of people like Cara and her family, once and for all.

Karen and I just returned from San Antonio, TX where we attended the Romance Writers of America Conference. We thought we’d share some of the highlights from the week so you could enjoy the fun with us. For writers, it’s always fun to share news and pictures from signings and reader events since it’s the most glamorous part of our work. Three hundred and fifty days of the year we are decidedly non-glamorous, parked on our couches and dreaming up scenes for our latest creations. To watch us work is not exciting! But when we meet with readers, it’s all good times.

We had fun signing copies of our books for readers ruing the Literacy Autographing, where all the profits go toward literacy efforts. We were fortunate to find plenty of Young Adult readers in the crowd including these two awesome readers who snagged “I ❤ my Camp Boyfriend” tees.

We were thrilled to be nominated for a Booksellers Best Award for Camp Boyfriend this year and got to attend a reception for the finalists. We spread the word about the new book in our series, Camp Payback, and hope we intrigued some new readers to try the series. But we also got to leave the conference hotel to explore San Antonio, which was really fun. I snapped a pic of Karen on our riverboat cruise along the Riverwalk:

I’d never been to the city and we were so impressed at how pretty it was. And the restaurants? Wow! We had some amazing meals. Friday night was a party night and we went out to dinner with friends and then on to publisher parties.

So yes… non stop fun for days! You can imagine it’s tricky to settle back down and start working again after all that excitement. I really liked going out to dinner every day. I didn’t cook or clean, I just had fun celebrating the accomplishments of another writing year. But if we want to attend this event again, we’ll need to settle down soon and write some books. Next year, I’m inviting you all to attend RWA with us so you can visit with other readers and writers. Next year’s conference is in New York City where we can spend mornings sightseeing, afternoons talking about books, and evenings indulging in much better food than we get at home. It’s a real treat, and even if it’s only for a brief time each year, it’s a really nice reward for all the hard work of the days in between.